[OSM-talk] Response to A critique of OpenStreetMap

Kate Chapman kate at maploser.com
Thu Oct 14 19:33:25 BST 2010


Richard,

Point 1: I'm not denying that the data in the U.S. is messed up.  On
the other hand I can't count the number of times people say things
that I summarize to 'God, why are you Americans too stupid, lazy or
import crazy to map your own country?"  It really makes people want to
continue mapping with the project.

Yes it appears when people compare OSM to Google/Bing/etc they seem to
start in the U.S.  This is unfortunate for the rest of the community
that has some amazing maps in their own countries.  It is going to
take a long time to fix the U.S. map with the number of contributors
we currently have, even long if it is hard to get new ones to join.
Mapping in the U.S. started after Europe and I think it is simply and
unfortunately going to take some time.

Point 2: I think this would fix a lot of the issues as well and make
U.S. data look better in the U.S.


-Kate

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
>
> Mike N. wrote:
>> And along those lines,  based on the constructive criticism, the default
>> map shown on the main OSM page should be a "pretty map", using
>> tiles from Mapquest, while mappers that have a need to view more
>> details can select one of the existing map styles.
>
> 41latitude is a really interesting blog and I like it, including this latest
> post. I think you could largely sum up his criticisms in two broad headings:
>
>   1. US OSM contributors need to get their shit together
>   2. European maps don't look like American ones
>
> For 1 - seriously, you do. In the UK we don't have some roads tagged "A3400"
> and others tagged "A-3400" and others tagged "CNSE" (Chipping Norton
> Stratford Expressway, _obviously_): they're all tagged a la "A3400". Our
> roads are coherently classified according to the UK highway system, even
> though it might seem counterintuitive (we tag non-primary A roads as
> "highway=primary" - well, so what). As a result our map looks lovely. If you
> get your shit together than your map will look lovely too.
>
> For 2 - right. That's why you're saying "use MapQuest tiles". But over here
> we're used to the Ordnance Survey and its subtle use of colouring, and so
> OSM looks just right and Google et al look spartan. It's no coincidence that
> when Mary Spence of the British Cartographic Society was all over the
> newspapers criticising Internet cartography, she qualified it with "but
> OpenStreetMap looks lovely".
>
> Now the way that Google and friends solve this is by having country-specific
> rendering rules. They're all within a certain framework, of course, but it
> means that Google US has shields and orange interstates, while Google UK has
> boxes and blue motorways.
>
> We really ought to do this. But AIUI there will need to be some
> Mapnik/osm2pgsql patches before it can happen. svn is that way ----> :)
>
> cheers
> Richard
>
>
> --
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>
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